Remember those “mass XBOX Live bannings” from Halloween? You know, the ones that prompted Microsoft to say:
“We have taken action against a small percentage of consoles that have been modified to play pirated game discs. In line with our commitment to combat piracy and support safer and more secure gameplay for the more than 20 million members of our Xbox LIVE community, we are suspending these modded consoles from Xbox LIVE.”
Well, it may be a small percentage, but its still a lot of consoles. A rumored 1 million in fact. While Microsoft maintains that they are always monitoring and banning modded XBOX users, it became clear that they were concentrating their efforts after a number of “victims” started to complain on the official XBOX Live forum. These numbers, if accurate, only confirm the stepped up efforts.
Bear in mind however that while BBC and MSN have reported this as fact, they rely on “online reports” that may stem back to a random gaming blog whose author claims to have a friend working at the Microsoft call center. In other words, this could be the equivalent of neighborhood gossip in the gaming community. Guess we’ll see if Microsoft chooses to address address the rumor in response to the attention.
